Previously Teaisme asked, "Have you ever not raved about a tea item in fear that others would buy it all up? I get the feeling there are a lot of 'tea secrets' around here. And fess up and come clean! What was the tea?"

Today we ask, "Have you ever not raved about a teaWARE in fear that others would buy it? I get the feeling there are a lot of 'teaWARE secrets' around here. So, fess up and come clean! What was the teaWARE?"

Have a great TeaDay! Anybody celebrating USMemorialDay with a "picanic?" TEA?

I've been lucky in not having lost any of my nearest and dearest to war, but I have inherited my great uncle's military trunk as my coffee table--he was a casualty in WWII. My dad never spoke about his time in Korea except to give us the impression that he was always well behind the lines doing boring stuff, but with his passing and the loss of my uncle this past year, I learned more than I ever had before about some of what they did when they served together. Some of it was the kind of stuff that many men would brag about afterwards, but there must have been some horrors too, to so tie his tongue on that subject--when he was so voluble about everything else. Fortunately, when he was speaking about tea, I listened.

No picnic for tea here, unless going out into the yard to have some tea counts. This has been a househunting weekend--the excitement of a beautifully staged open house, the horror of the financial implications of terrifyingly high purchase prices, the fun puzzles of 'how could I fit my stuff into THIS house? where would TeaCentral be?' one place I'm looking at has a series of perfect outoor tea nooks.

Starting the day with the end of a pouch of Wu Niu Zao green tea from Norbu, brewed in a Petr Novak shiboridashi, and drinking out of my Cory Lum 'beach' bildoro yunomi.

A few times I've been very quiet on eBay auction items hoping no one would sneak in and run away with the auction, but there have also been one or two times where I've posted a link to an item on etsy hoping someone else would buy it, and save me from my own TAD. So it goes both ways!

One I kept quiet about, and that still had an underbidder who pushed the price up more than 3 times the original minimum bid:

In response to the Teaday question, I do not think so. Usually once I decide if I am going to buy it or not, I start raving about it. If I am going to buy it though its after I have placed and confirmed an order for one. Otherwise I really enjoy just sharing and discussing certain pieces of teaware with others.

I'll let you know when I come across teaware worthy of keeping a secret! But seriously, everything that I have purchased has been shared with the community in some form - either here or on the blog or FB.

If offer is good and limited i would not go boasting about it to everyone, only to certain people i know. I had some opportunities to buy nice teaware relatively cheap when people wanted to free some space by selling their old pieces. Especially nice to get good quality works without boxes/papers, well, at least when you pay for teaware and not mostly for name of artisan For expensive stuff need to be an expert to buy in this way.

This is a bit different than tea. Tea is generally available in a more steady supply (yeah, not always). Teaware can be quite the contrary, maybe one piece or set available, period. Or each piece of a firing being unique ... and some much more to personal taste than others.

Or, perhaps a newer obsession ... and always more limited in scope than tea. Recently this would include older chataku (teacup saucers of traditional Asian design).

But having made some good purchases, I can now come out of the TeawareCloset. But while searching, I don't think I mentioned chataku on TeaChat, although they have been sneaking into photos I posted on TeaChat recently. Auctions are competitive enough without me hyping them!